The hard version!

Monday, 23 April 2012

A mindbending evening

If you’ve ever wondered what they get up to in Penzance of a Friday night . . .

Not exactly a pressing question, I’d guess. But still . . .

There, by myself, I saw in the local paper that the Mindbenders were playing in a local pub, the Dock Inn. The Mindbenders, I thought, that can’t really be the same ones I vaguely remember from the 1960s, can it?

Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, I seem to remember they were called. What a great name: a collision of aspirant 1960s working class first name, a record label title for a surname and a hint of drugginess in the backing band’s name. I also seem to recall their hit was A Groovy Kind of Love and that the band later split from Mr Fontana.

It’s an archetypal West Cornwall scene. Older women, often divorced, looking out for themselves. Many of them found their way there in search of a new life. New agey stuff, often. They completely outnumber the men of their age and income group. And they remember their younger selves, it seems, by dancing to a group from that period.

What was the Mindbenders’ performance like? As you might expect, there were now just two of them — a pair of old geezers. Bass and guitar, plus drum machine.

I didn’t stay for much more than half an hour but they didn’t play a song I didn’t know — though none of them were Mindbenders songs. One of them, the bassist, I think, introduced each song with the name of its original performer/writer and a little story about it. There, I thought, is someone who long ago grasped the import of a PRS statement. I quite liked their attempt at Robert Parker’s Barefootin’ — though nothing, of course, could ever match the fizz of the original.

Having written all that, I googled and wikied. I now know these things:

* Mr Fontana was born Glyn Geoffrey Ellis.

* Even though he and his band were on the Fontana label, he actually got his surname from Elvis Presley’s drummer, DJ Fontana.

* Fontana is a town in California. Beyond that, I can’t find out what it means or why Philips picked it for one of their record labels.

* Mr Fontana now seems to have mental health issues — court appearances in weird costumes, setting fire to his own car.

* The two hits he had that I do remember from the list are Um etc, a cover of a Major Lance tune, and Game of Love.

* The Mindbenders’ name had nothing to do with drugs. It came from a Dirk Bogarde movie The Mind

Benders.

* I was right about A Groovy Kind of Love. Written by Toni Wine and Carole Bayer Sager (Burt Bacharach’s ex-wife among other things), it’s apparently based on a piece of classical music — the Rondo of Clementi’s Sonatina in G. Not that I’ve actually heard it.* It was originally done by Diane and Annita. I actually have that version on a wonderful Ace compilation, You Heard It Here First! The originals of I Feel Good, My Boy Lollipop and Wild Things are also gorgeous surprises.

* Later Mindbenders included Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman, future members of 10CC. I don’t think they were the ones in the Dock Inn, Penzance version. Graham Gouldman did, however, write this song, for the Yardbirds.